[EM] inaccurate Fargo approval voting results

[Michael Garman]

I'm happy to make tweaks! I don't have all the answers, Bob. I've never
pretended to.

My issue is with the people -- many of whom are on this list -- who view
something that fails less than 1% of the time as insufficiently preferable
to the status quo and would encourage voters to reject it in favor of
preserving FPP.

Advocate for the best currently viable option != accept it as the best
we'll ever have.

On Sat, Jun 8, 2024 at 5:40 PM robert bristow-johnson <
rbj at audioimagination.com> wrote:

>
>
> > On 06/08/2024 4:20 PM EDT Michael Garman <michael.garman at rankthevote.us>
> wrote:
> >
> >
> > Oh no…it only works 99.2% of the time! The horror!
> >
>
> Could work 99.6% of the time.  Or we could revert to FPTP and it works 97%
> of the time (i.e. in less than 3% of RCV elections, a difference occurs in
> who is elected).  The failure rate of FPTP is not all that bad, yet there
> is your organization, FairVote, RCVRC, dozens of state/local organizations,
> with scores of employees committed to correcting that 3%.
>
> But not interested in correcting their own flaws.  So much so that they
> lie about the performance of their own product and they lie about the
> objective failures when they do occur.
>
> A bridge or some other construction that failed, unnecessarily, 0.4% of
> the time that it is used would not be considered acceptable.  But elections
> are less important than bridges.
>
> You see, Michael, when the stakes are high, even low failure rates become
> important.  The Electoral College hasn't failed all that often, but because
> in recent times it has failed twice, 16 years apart, that's bringing
> attention to the systemic failure (because this failure is favoring a
> particular side).
>
> As RCV is used more and more, these other failures will happen more
> often.  Each time this failure occurs, especially when the failure is
> unnecessary and avoidable, bad shit happens.  Like repeal efforts that get
> on the ballot.
>
> So the question is, do RCV advocates learn from these glitches?  Or
> continue to deny the failures or minimize the significance of the failure?
>
> You are clearly in the latter group.  You haven't learned yet that course
> corrections early in the voyage are less costly than later in the voyage.
> We're quite early in the voyage of RCV reform, there is solid evidence of
> not heading in the intended direction, yet you continue to deny the
> indication of a course correction and insist that we dig in deeper and
> commit to exactly the same heading that has already demonstrated the need
> for adjustment.
>
> The need for adjustment is multi-faceted (another thing you ignore).
> Especially with the nut-cases challenging the legitimacy of election
> results *along with* T**** and sycophants actually trying to simply fudge
> the election results, any reform that causes a reversion or roll-back of
> process transparency *hurts* the election reform movement.  Right now, with
> FPTP, we have redundancy in tabulation and we can tell who wins *directly*
> from the tallies posted at the source (the polling places) on the evening
> of the election.  This is what protects us from some corrupt official
> simply fudging the numbers and "finding, uh, 11780, uh, votes."
>
> Secretary of State Raffenberger was not (and is not) corrupt, but Jeffery
> Clark (a different high official) obviously is.  We need process
> transparency to prevent a corrupt election official from fudging the
> numbers from the tallies.  We need decentralization and process
> transparency to prevent the QAnon assholes from making any credible claims
> that accurate tallies were fudged.  We lose all that with Hare RCV.  And
> like the 0.4% of the Hare RCV that failed, this loss is unnecessary.
>
> But you're still in denial.
>
> --
>
> r b-j . _ . _ . _ . _ rbj at audioimagination.com
>
> "Imagination is more important than knowledge."
>
> .
> .
> .
> ----
> Election-Methods mailing list - see https://electorama.com/em for list
> info
>
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